Media Release

Draining superannuation is not the silver bullet to solving Australia’s housing crisis, will leave young Australians behind

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) is disappointed to see Australia’s world-class superannuation system used as a political football in the upcoming Federal election, and erroneously sold as a silver bullet solution to Australian’s complex housing crisis.

In a speech given to the Sydney Institute on Tuesday night, Liberal Senator for New South Wales Andrew Bragg doubled down on the Coalition’s policy that allowing young Australians to withdraw super would improve their access to the housing market.

“After having this proposal soundly rejected at the last Federal election, Senator Bragg has brought back the same policy which will leave young people behind and entrench intergenerational inequality,” said ASFA CEO, Mary Delahunty.

ASFA, the voice of super, shares the aspiration that everyone in Australia deserves a safe place to live. However, recent ASFA Research found allowing early access to superannuation for housing would not make home ownership more attainable for the majority of aspiring first-home buyers and those with low superannuation balances.

The analysis of over 300,000 ATO superannuation records cross-referenced with capital-city property prices showed the people it would help the most are those who already have a larger super balance and income and are more likely to be able to afford a home.

“Australians can see clearly that this type of measure would likely push up house prices by increasing demand-side pressures on the housing market, putting home ownership even more out of reach for most aspiring first-home buyers,” said Ms Delahunty.

“In his speech Senator Bragg argues that using super for a home deposit is better than being a lifelong renter, but why does it have to be either-or?”

“Young people and first-home buyers rightly expect to have both dignity in retirement and housing. Unfortunately Senator Bragg’s proposals risk resulting in neither,” she added.

Senator Bragg noted that a range of structural and policy issues have created the housing crisis, and will require a multi-faceted response.

“ASFA would welcome policy proposals from all sides of politics that work towards solving Australia’s housing supply and cost crisis whilst still ensuring dignity in retirement through our world-class retirement system.”

Carmen Beverley-Smith

Executive Director - Superannuation, Life & Private Health Insurance, APRA

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.  

She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service. 

Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting. 

Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent. 

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities. 

Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.

Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organisational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

 

Daniel Mulino MP

Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.

He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.

In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.

In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.

In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.